20 Cybersecurity Startups To Watch In 2016
Some of the most intriguing security startups flush with funds, talent and ideas.
February 17, 2016
![](https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt6d90778a997de1cd/blt626a3988f729a503/64f0db2e12374cf2d8b08de9/startups.jpeg?width=700&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale)
With an epic year in cybersecurity venture funding behind us and lots of money still flowing to startup coffers in 2016, expectations continue to grow for a blossoming crop of security startups. Yes, the hype may also be growing to epic proportions as everyone tries to outcompete with one another's game-changing, next generation, big data, intelligence-driven, platform-based silver bullet gizmos. But amidst all of the marketing puffery, there's substance to a lot of the innovation out there, as the latest class of newcomers tries to help practitioners fix what's broken in infosec today.
Here's a cheat sheet of some of the movers and shakers most likely to continue making waves in this year. These firms are primarily early- to middle-stage startups who've met some distinction in the past year. That might mean launching into a greenfield niche with a decent seed round, snagging a recent funding round in the last few months, or earning huge Series A or B rounds. Most of these firms have launched in the last three years. And many have earned distinction from their executive roster, with a number of well-known or otherwise highly credentialed security veterans at the helm. In the interest of bringing some new blood to the spotlight, we've included only companies that were not already featured in our 20 Startups To Watch In 2015, published last year.
Mobile app risk management service
Factors To Watch: Recent Funding
Founded: 2011
2016 Funding: $10M (January)
Notable Leaders/Founders: Co-founder Kevin Watkins -- an alum of Intel Security and NetIQ -- he's got over 15 years of experience in security engineering and architecture work.
Cybersecurity solutions for connected automobiles
Factors To Watch: $25M+ funding round in 2015; newcomer to hot niche; All-Star Security Executive(s)
Founded: 2013
2015 Funding: $26M Series B (September)
Notable Leaders/Founders: CEO Ofer Ben-Noon, CTO Yaron Glula, VP of R&D Oron Lavi -- these three co-founders are all ex-captains for the Israel Defense Force's Cyber Intelligence Unit 8200.
Automated endpoint detection and response
Factors To Watch: $25M+ funding round in 2015, All-Star Security Executive(s)
Founded: 2012
2015 Funding: $25M Series B (May), $59M Series C (October)
Notable Leaders/Founders: CEO Lior Div --developed his cybersecurity chops within the Israel Defense Force's Cyber Intelligence Unit 8200, distinguished with an IDF Medal of Honor for his work in forensics, hacking, reverse engineering and encryption.
Network obfuscation through VM decoys
Factors To Watch: Newcomer to hot niche; All-Star Security Executive(s)
Founded: 2014
2015 Funding: $1.5M Seed Round (July), $9M Series A (November)
Notable Leaders/Founders: Gadi Evron -- over 15 years experience, including stints as Kaspersky's VP of Cybersecurity Strategy and the head of PwC's Cyber Security Center of Excellence.
Threat detection and incident response
Factors To Watch: Recent Funding
Founded: 2015
2016 Funding: $7M Series A (February)
Notable Leaders/Founders: CEO Eyal Gruner -- formerly founded Verasafe, which was picked up for an undisclosed sum by F5 Networks in 2013
Threat intelligence and cyber situational awareness
Factors To Watch: Recent Funding; All-Star Security Executive(s)
Founded: 2011
2015 Funding: $8M Series A (February)
2016 Funding: $14M Series B (February)
Notable Leaders/Founders: CEO Alastair Paterson and CTO James Chappell -- both of these co-founders have a longtime pedigree in security working for BAE Systems Detica; VP Strategy Rick Holland -- a former VP and principal analyst for Forrester, he also serves as the co-chair of the SANS Cyber Threat Intelligence Summit; Head of Threat Intelligence Research USA Will Gragido -- more than 18 years of experience across numerous security industry stalwarts, including IBM ISS, HP TippingPoint and RSA Netwitness.
Big data security analytics
Factors To Watch: $25M+ funding round in 2015
Founded: 2013
2015 Funding: $25M (September)
Notable Leaders/Founders: Nir Polak -- spent the bulk of his career at Imperva, serving in a number of roles, including former VP of Corporate Strategy
Network security isolation platform
Factors To Watch: Recent Funding; All-Star Security Executive(s)
Founded: 2014
2016 Funding: $20M Series A (January 26)
Notable Leaders/Founders: CEO Guy Guzner --spent well over a decade climbing the ranks at Check Point to eventually lead as head of security products.
Vulnerability coordination and bug bounty platform
Factors To Watch: $25M+ funding round in 2015; Recent Funding
Founded: 2012
2015 Funding: $25M Series B (June)
Notable Leaders/Founders: CTO & Co-Founder Alex Rice-- over ten years experience in IT security, including as a senior researcher for Websense and head of product security for Facebook; Chief Policy Officer Katie Moussouris -- best known for security strategy work at Microsoft, she was the creator of Microsoft's first bug bounty program.
Data center and cloud security
Factors To Watch: $25M+ funding round in 2015; All-Star Security Executive(s)
Founded: 2013
2015 Funding: $100M Series C (April)
Notable Leaders/Founders: CTO and Co-Founder PJ Kirner -- a longtime engineer with 20 years of experience, including more than 5 years at Juniper as a distinguished engineer.
Threat intelligence management and security orchestration
Factors To Watch: $25M+ funding round in 2015; recent funding
Founded: 2006
2015 Funding: $20M Series B (March), $50M Series C (December)
Notable Leaders/Founders: CTO Allan Thomson -- over three decades under his belt in the network, security and distributed systems worlds. His most recent gig was leading software architecture and design of Cisco's Cyber Threat Defense System and Platform Exchange Grid.
Factors To Watch: $25M+ funding round in 2016; Recent Funding
Founded: 2008
2016 Funding: $50M Series B (January)
Notable Leaders/Founders: CEO Marcin Kleczynski -- a relative youngster for the post, he's racked up a number of accolades over the last few years, including Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the year for 2014 and Forbes' 30 Under 30 list last year.
Call center authentication and anti-fraud technology
Factors To Watch: $25M+ funding round in 2015; Recent Funding; All-Star Security Executive(s)
Founded: 2011
2015 Funding: $35M Series B (February)
2016 Funding: $75M Series C (January)
Notable Leaders/Founders: Executive Chairman and Co-Founder Paul Judge -- concurrently chief research officer and VP for Barracuda Networks, he's a serial entrepreneur in the cybersecurity space, most notably the founder of Purewire, which was acquired by Barracuda in 2009.
Next generation endpoint protection
Factors To Watch: $25M+ funding round in 2015
Founded: 2013
2015 Funding: $25M Series B (October)
Notable Leaders/Founders: CTO Almog Cohen -- has chalked up 17 years of security experience, including seven spent at Check Point.
Factors To Watch: $25M+ funding round in 2015; Recent Funding; All-vulnerability intelligence platform and crowdsourced research
Factors To Watch: $25M+ funding round in 2015; Recent Funding; All-Star Security Executive(s)
Founded: 2013
2015 Funding: $25M Series B (February)
Notable Leaders/Founders: CEO Jay Kaplan and CTO Mark Khur -- both of these co-founders come with a rich history of work at the DoD and NSA, with experience between the two of them in incident response and red team coordination as well as security intelligence, pen testing and forensics.
Vulnerability management and network monitoring
Factors To Watch: $25M+ funding round in 2015; All-Star Security Executive(s)
Founded: 2002
2015 Funding: $250M Series B (November)
Notable Leaders/Founders: CEO Ron Gula -- a scion of network security engineering, Gula is the author of one of the industry's first IDS systems and has garnered this latest massive round of funding to jumpstart this fairly established startup; Senior Strategist Marcus Ranum has been designing security systems for over 30 years and is a mainstay in the security speaker and author circuit, with experience across the Fortune 500 and government sector.
Threat intelligence platform
Factors To Watch: Newcomer to hot niche; Recent Funding
Founded: 2013
2015 Funding: $2M Seed Round (April), $10.2M Series A (December)
Notable Leaders/Founders: President and CEO John Czupak serves as an advisor and board member for a number of tech companies and has deep security experience, most notably as the SVP of business development at Sourcefire leading to its $2.7B acquisition by Cisco.
Container security for Docker and other environments
Factors To Watch: Newcomer to hot niche; All-Star Security Executive(s)
Founded: 2015
2015 Funding: $2.5M Seed Round (May)
Notable Leaders/Founders: CEO and Co-Founder Ben Bernstein -- Executive with nearly 15 years under his belt working up and down Microsoft's developer and project management organizations; Chief Strategy Officer Chenxi Wang -- best known for her work as VP at Forrester Research, she served as VP of Cloud Security & Strategy at CipherCloud and VP of Strategy and Market Intelligence for Intel Security prior to Twistlock.
Social media security
Factors To Watch: $25M+ funding round in 2015; Newcomer to hot niche; Recent Funding
Founded: 2013
2015 Funding: $27M Series B (December)
Notable Leaders/Founders: CEO James Foster -- a prolific author of hacking and penetration testing guides, he previously worked as SVP and advisory board chairman for Accuvant following the acquisition of his consulting firm Ciphent Inc.
Social media security
Factors To Watch: $25M+ funding round in 2015; Newcomer to hot niche; Recent Funding
Founded: 2013
2015 Funding: $27M Series B (December)
Notable Leaders/Founders: CEO James Foster -- a prolific author of hacking and penetration testing guides, he previously worked as SVP and advisory board chairman for Accuvant following the acquisition of his consulting firm Ciphent Inc.
With an epic year in cybersecurity venture funding behind us and lots of money still flowing to startup coffers in 2016, expectations continue to grow for a blossoming crop of security startups. Yes, the hype may also be growing to epic proportions as everyone tries to outcompete with one another's game-changing, next generation, big data, intelligence-driven, platform-based silver bullet gizmos. But amidst all of the marketing puffery, there's substance to a lot of the innovation out there, as the latest class of newcomers tries to help practitioners fix what's broken in infosec today.
Here's a cheat sheet of some of the movers and shakers most likely to continue making waves in this year. These firms are primarily early- to middle-stage startups who've met some distinction in the past year. That might mean launching into a greenfield niche with a decent seed round, snagging a recent funding round in the last few months, or earning huge Series A or B rounds. Most of these firms have launched in the last three years. And many have earned distinction from their executive roster, with a number of well-known or otherwise highly credentialed security veterans at the helm. In the interest of bringing some new blood to the spotlight, we've included only companies that were not already featured in our 20 Startups To Watch In 2015, published last year.
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